________________________________________

…But we Pray to god that he would Send forth his
Good Spirit into your harts and Remind you of your Duty and make you the
Instermints of Binding up the Brokenharted and of Proclaiming Liberty to the
captives and the opening of the Prison to them that are Bound…

-Petition of 1780 by
slaves for the abolition of slavery in Connecticut.

He has sent me to bring good news to the oppressed,
to bind up the brokenhearted to proclaim liberty to the captives and release to
the prisoners…

-Isaiah 61:1

_______________________________________

The prison system of our nation
was born of capitalistic intentions. In fact, if you look closely, it is more
than apparent that the prison system of today is nothing more than the
evolutionary spin-off of the prohibited practice of slavery. Much of our
criminal law, though marketed as policy designed to protect our nation’s
citizenry, is at its core both racist and capitalistic

Look at the statistics, and you’ll see that a
considerably disproportionate number of blacks are behind bars, you’ll see that
the structuring of our state’s drug sentencing laws are designed to penalize
blacks and other minorities more drastically than whites. The most glaring
examples of this are due largely to “war on drugs,” which concentrates greatly
on urban areas heavily populated by minority groups, despite the fact that much
drug use occurs predominantly in suburban white areas.

Look
past the smoke and mirrors, the political marketing and “tough on crime”
rhetoric being heaved by our nation’s political right and “left,” and one can
easily see there is currently
a committed effort, on the parts of many politicians and private industry
economists, to return the prison system to the dollar generating enterprise it
was in the 1800s. Unfortunately, those in favor of such restructuring pay little
mind to the atrocious conditions of the earlier system, and the human cost
necessary to yield such profits.

However, more than simply
attempting to turn the overcrowding crisis into a self-sustaining endeavor, and
more optimistically, a profit generating enterprise, in some lights it actually
appears that there may be an active attempt by some to further foster the
endemic prison-overcrowding crisis in order to gain both public support for
such change as well as create a greater prison work-force.

○○○

An August 2001 article from the
National Center for Policy Analysis’ titled “Prisoners Spell Dollars for
Communities” cites some interesting ways in which some communities have been
able to capitalize on the recent prison construction boom:

Most federal formula-grant
programs…are based at least partially on census numbers—and prisoners are
counted just like everyone else. Some states…also use census statistics to
parcel out state tax revenues and other funds. Never mind the fact that the incarcerated
get little benefit from the roads, parks and services the grants pay for.[1]

The article goes on to explain
how some communities have used prison populations to boost their total
population numbers to better qualify for grants, in some small communities the
addition of prison populations more than doubled their total population counts.
The article cites other “benefits” created by building prisons in some
communities:

Also prisoners have little or no
income, they depress per capita wages. This makes prison-hosting towns eligible
for additional cash from federal and state anti-poverty programs…Heavily
minority inner cities lose government funds when their residents are
transferred to rural communities and locked up. Furthermore, inmates are counted
for legislative apportionment and redistricting—even though they can’t vote. So
in states such as New York, the prison boom has helped to shift political
muscle from minority-dominated inner cities to rural areas dominated by whites.1

Taking facts such as this into
consideration, it becomes clear that if the corrections-industrial complex
could effectively formulate a self-sufficient prison system and foster
pre-existent racist trends in law enforcement, the benefits for politicians and
the country’s economic elite continue to compound themselves. A 1999
Perspective magazine articles addresses this prospect:

Prison Labor is inherently prone
to political corruption. On the most basic level, it produces a profit
incentive for politicians to build prisons, increase arrests, and extend
sentences. Riding the “tough on crime” attitude in America and a public demand
to cut prisoner benefits and programs, companies that utilize prison labor are
fueling the prison boom in the United States. This new aspect of the prison-industrial
complex show itself in many examples: questionable campaign contributions,
political favors, and the movement of individuals back and forth from political
posts to managerial posts in a prison industry.[2]

○○○

Look at the promotional pamphlets
distributed at the gates of Old Newgate Prison State Park and you’ll see that
the myths of three hundred years ago still live to this day:

Enter…into the world of convicted
horse thieves, counterfeiters, and murderers…. At night prisoners were confined
underground in an abandoned copper mine. During the day they labored within
these stone walls to earn their keep.[3]

An older Promotional Pamphlet
from the 1980s is even further laden with evident untruths:

Prisoners were kept in the mine
at night, and in total darkness. Yet, some of the inmates preferred this to the
cells above ground as it enabled them to move about more freely and to talk to
other prisoners…[4]

The true story of Newgate Prison
is a grim account of the capitalistic motivations behind the inception of
America’s modern Prison System, which paved the way for programs involving
prison labor, including so-called “prisoner leasing” for centuries to come.

The Newgate mines (originally
called Simsbury copper mine) were first mined in 1707, and were initially owned
by private landowners, including a governor of Massachusetts. But soon the
private enterprise proved too costly to continue.5 Soon the mines came into the ownership of
the Colony of Connecticut.

The colony of Connecticut first
used Newgate as a prison in December of 1773, and in October of 1776, Newgate
became the first state prison in the newly established United States of
America. Prior to the use of Newgate, prison sentences as punishment were
virtually non-existent in the New World and Europe.

Prison was where the accused
awaited trial. Generally, punishments were administered in the form of corporal
or capital punishment, public humiliation, or the imposing of a monetary fine.
Floggings, disfigurement, branding, were all accepted forms of physical
punishment. Public humiliation was achieved by utilizing the stocks or pillory.[5] However,
someone must have realized that a working prisoner is worth more than a dead or
wounded one.

Well before Newgate’s
inauguration as a prison, the mining enterprise had proved unprofitable.
Connecticut, having a relatively small number of slaves, found it difficult to
find employees to mine for the local smiths. A Connecticut legislative
committee suggested that sentenced criminals be sent to the mines, instead of
imposing traditional forms of punishment. In 1773, the first inmate descended
into the mine.[6]

[Newgate] marks a radical
departure in punishment. In many respects it foreshadows what is to
come…Newgate houses both violent and non-violent offenders, and the only goal
of punishment is retribution…there are no cells; men women and children are all
thrown together… The prison does not generate enough money through
copper-mining and tries other moneymaking ventures…Nothing works…Eventually, it
becomes too expensive to maintain and is replaced by a new institution in
Wethersfield.[7]

Eventually, it seems, even with
the newly created free labor force, Newgate lacked the ability to create
profits. The legislature’s experiment had backfired, but by now the justice
systems of both the state and country had come to regard lengthy prison
sentences as the preferred form of punishment.

The opening of the Wethersfield
State Prison in September of 1827 marked another landmark in the evolution of
Connecticut’s prison system. Modeled after the newly designed “Auburn System”
of the then considered state-of-the-art Auburn prison in New York State,
Wethersfield represented a departure from the slapdash organization of Newgate.

The Auburn System was itself a deviation
from the so-called Pennsylvania System, which was formulated around the belief
that Solitary Confinement was the only effective form of rehabilitation, as it
forced inmates to “repent their sins and consider their deviant acts.”2 Under this system, inmates labored alone in
their cells, however this type of prison industry soon proved exceptionally
unprofitable. A similar experiment performed at Auburn prison in New York
State, proved exceptionally disastrous and was deemed an unequivocal failure as
many of the inmates became insane from their confinement.

The system, for which Auburn
eventually became known, moved away from solitary confinement. However, though
the inmates ate and worked together, they were not allowed to ever look at or
speak with one another. If they broke the rules they were physically punished.2 The “military-like model” was instituted not
only to “keep prisoners in-line” but also to provide for more profitable and
efficient prison-industry.

This system, the foundation for
Connecticut’s Wethersfield Prison, proved less expensive than the Pennsylvania
system, and state’s began to see greater profits being made from their prison
enterprises; however, most prison industries still did not make enough money to
cover the expenses of running the prison as a whole.

The mid to late 1800s marked
another dramatic change in the way prisons were run. This period provides the
most visible examples of states capitalizing on prison-labor, as well as the
most blatant role of racism in the history of the prison-industrial complex
thus far.

Following
the civil war, the South found itself in dire need to replace the former
workforce of newly emancipated slaves. No longer able to legally steal/breed a
captive labor force, Southerners needed to come up with new ways of supplying
themselves with cheap labor. Up until then, states had been unable to
successfully utilize prison-labor making the prison system self sufficient, let
alone achieving their ultimate goals of transforming the prison system into a profit
generating enterprise. The administrative costs had continually eclipsed the
money made from prison-industries.

But at this point, the prison
system and private industry began to coordinate their efforts, creating the
first profitable prison-industries in history. The practice became know as
“prison leasing.”

Article XIII, Section 1 of the
constitution of the United States asserts that “Neither slavery not involuntary
servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been
duly convicted, shall exist within the United States…” There is the loophole.
Contrary to popular belief, slavery is still legal in the United States of
America; there are now simply conditions.

In a November 1995 article
written by Pete Dupont, former governor of Delaware (a state which hosted
public whippings as a form of legal punishment up until the 1950s), and then
Policy Chairman for the National Center for Policy Analysis, the author laments
the good old days of a profit yielding prison system.

It was not always this way. In
the last century, prisons earned a major part of their daily cost by leasing
convict labor to private employers. In 1885, three-fourths of prison inmates
were involved in productive labor, the majority working for private employers under
contract and leasing arrangements.[8]

But Dupont gives little insight
as to the specifics of the prison-leasing movement of the 1800s. This practice,
which is explored more in Section III of this essay, was little more than a
circumnavigation of the banning of slavery by the emancipation proclamation.

In prison leasing, states gave up
total control of its inmate population to the highest bidder. This practice was
especially popular in the southern areas of this country where former slave
owners now had no way running their businesses with the luxury of a cheap labor
force. After the institution of prison leasing, states had nothing to lose by
committing another prisoner to incarceration, on the contrary it had everything
to gain. More prisoners meant more profits, and since prisons were then just as
racially imbalanced as they are today, one more prisoner for the most part
meant one less free Negro.

Unfortunately, the crime of which
many of these neo-slaves of the 1800s had been convicted of was simply being
black. Many convictions were based upon “crimes” as dubious as “vagrancy.” This
racist trend continues in many ways today with a racially biased law
enforcement community, and laws unfairly weighed against minorities.

But the
halcyon days of comfortable prison profiteering eventually came to and end
during the great depression. Due to pressures from labor union““s and competing
businesses, Congress implements laws, which made it more difficult for states
and private industries to profit from prison labor. For the following forty
years, prisoners would labor for government agencies and non-profits
exclusively (See section II. History). However, by the 1980s most of these laws
had been rescinded and the country began to move back toward the “slaves of the
state” ideologies of the 1880s.[9]

Today,
proponents of prison labor include business leaders and corrections
administrators. The latter is no surprise when folks like Pete Dupont state
that legislation should “Let prisons ‘profit’ from accepting these contracts.
Provide monetary incentives to prisons and their wardens for leading their
institutions to self-sufficiency.”1 As
for the business leaders, there is little doubt as to what their motivations
are.

By
implementing prison labor, private businesses profit in a number of ways. The
voluminous NCPA report, “Factories Behind Bars,” explains the many benefits for
private industries that utilize prison labor. The study explains that privately
run prison industries boast greater productivity levels than those run by the
state.

The
study shows how states can profit from privately run prison labor. The study
explains that with an average wage of $5.00 an hour, each prisoner can generate
an income of about $10,000 per year, most of which will go back to the state.[10]

The
study also mentions “polls show that a majority of business leaders, who might
be expected to object to prison industries as unfair competition, actually
favor such programs.” Yet there is no explanation offered as to why they are in
favor of the programs. Here are some probable reasons why they are:

Prison labor is not protected by federal
safety and health standards, nor is it covered by National Labor Relations
policies.

Private industries are spared the expenses of
health, unemployment, and workers compensation benefits, and they are free
to hire and fire inmate employees at will, with none of the messy red
tape.

But,
for the most part, prison labor does not usually compete with our domestic
industries; rather prison labor is usually composed of the work most companies
already complete in other nations. Principally, prison labor competes with
third-world sweatshops (See APPENDIX A).

Prison
researchers have stated that most inmates will be hard pressed to find work on
the “outside” in the same areas in which they had worked while in prison.

“A
garment sewer in prison has little to look forward to in the garment industry
outside the walls, beside low wage and exploitation; never mind that most
garment shops are located overseas.”[11]

The
Perspectives Magazine article agrees: “…while prison labor mimics working
conditions in the developing world and can compete with overseas production,
the fields in which the inmates are gaining experience may not hold jobs for
them on the American market once they leave.”2

It is
statements like these that, if true, effectively take the wind out of any
claims of rehabilitative benefit such working environments will bequeath an
ex-prisoner (file “rehabilitation” along with “tough on crime” under “sounds
good”).

Another
benefit companies stand to gain by moving operations out of the developing
world and into American prisons is that they will then qualify to place the
desirable “Made in U.S.A.” label on their products. As one corporate bigwig
mentioned, “we’re employing Americans, they just happen to be incarcerated.”8

In
fact, some former New Jersey inmates revealed that their duties while working
in a prison shop included removing Honduran tags in garments and replacing them
with ones that read “Made in USA.”8

Though
promising to private industry, the NCPA study demonstrates some of the problems
private businesses might encounter while utilizing prison labor:

One of
the difficulties of creating jobs for prisoners is that many of them are
illiterate or semiliterate, or have low IQs, but champions of inmate labor are
confident such jobs could be created. The federal system has the best prospects
for high rates of payback because many of the prisoners are there for crimes
typically committed by more intelligent criminals like counterfeiting,
kidnapping and drug smuggling.5

There is
no mention in the study of educating these illiterate prisoners, for example,
teaching them to read, which may be a necessary aspect of true rehabilitation.
I think the reference to “more intelligent criminals” speaks for itself.

The
NCPA study also explains that “Prisoners Overwhelmingly Prefer Work to the
Tedium of Prison Life.” This statement brings up an interesting point. It is
the policy of the Connecticut DOC that any inmate who is offered a job in the
prison must accept the job or otherwise be confined to a segregation unit, i.e.
solitary confinement. As one article put it “Boredom is a powerful motivator in
prison.”7 A possible hypothesis would be
that prison jobs do not simply offer a break from the tedium of “prison life”
(see 23 hour lockdown in closet sized cells), but rather the tedious nature of
life in prison is designed to serve as motivation to get prisoners to work.
Looked at from this perspective, the policy of confinement to cells becomes
little more than a cunningly subtle psychological whip, as motivating as any
physical lashing.

APPENDIX
A:

SELECTED
EXAMPLES OF

PRIVATE INDUSTRY
& PRISON LABOR
___________________________

oIn 1998, MicroJet paid convict machinists only $7
per hour, as compared with the $30 per hour they would have had to have paid
union machinists. Also, MicroJet received a 56,000 square foot building rent
free with Washington State footing the maintenance fees.[12]

oLockhart Technologies, Inc. (manufacturer of
circuit boards for IBM, Compaq, and Dell) closed its Austin, Texas plant and
moved operations to a Texas prison run by Private Prison giant Wackenhut Corp.
without consulting with organized labor. Joe Gunn, president of Texas AFL-CIO
called the move “absolute indentured slavery. [Wackenhut] puts people to work under
conditions we criticize China for.” But Lockhart defended itself by stating
that there was no union in the county in which the prison was located. 9

oEscrod Industries moved to South Carolina only
after it dropped its plans to operate out of Mexico. The reason for the change
was that Mexican labor could not compete in cost with American prison labor.
South Carolina had further sweetened the deal by granting the company a
$250,000 “equipment subsidy” and offering industrial space at below market
rates.2

oOregon officials urged Nike (a company notorious
for its use of sweatshop labor) to relocate its Indonesia operations into
Oregon Prisons, stating, “We can offer competitive prison labor.”8

oJostens, Inc. a company that manufactures
graduation gowns, employed female inmates to perform duties liked to the
production work usually carried out in third-world countries. One company
executive was quoted as saying, “Keep it simple- put the least complex sewing
jobs you have inside the prison…”2

oNew Jersey inmates revealed that their duties
while working in a prison shop included removing Honduran tags in garments and
replacing them with ones that read “Made in USA.”8